Current Biometric Verification Management System not viable — Group

The Mass Action Committee (MAC), a civil society group, has stated that the decision by the Electoral Commission (EC) to compile a new voters register borders on the technical viability of the current Biometric Verification Management System (BVMS).

It explained that the manufacturers of the Biometric Verification Registration (BVR) kits had said in a letter they sent to the vendors of the equipment, Supertech Ghana Limited (STL), on May 18, 2018, that relative to repairs of faulty BVRs, the items in the BVR kits, including laptops, had served their lifespan.

Addressing a press conference in Accra last Wednesday, the Executive Secretary of MAC, Mr Atik Mohammed, said the manufacturers "... unambiguously recommended that for purposes of availability, maintainability and compatibility in the future, new BVRs be purchased".

The press conference was to respond to assertions by the Inter-Party Resistance Against the New Voters Register (IPRAN) that the current Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs) were not obsolete.

At a press conference last Tuesday, IPRAN indicated that its conclusion that the BVDs were not obsolete was informed by its checks with the manufacturers of the devices.

Devices

Mr Mohammed said he had sighted a letter signed by Marcel Boogaard, the Chief Executive Officer of HSB Identification, the company that supplied the BVRs, dated May 2018, which said the kits and the laptops had reached their end of life.

"So it cannot be the case that the EC delivered well-packaged lies as being alleged," he stated.

He said the BVDs were first procured in 2011 and that they had been overused and overstretched and, therefore, were unfit for the 2020 election.

"We want to state emphatically that the decision by the EC to procure new equipment, the basis of which we have already established, will rather be saving this country an amount to the tune of USD18,354,500," he stated.

Support EC

Mr Mohammed said the IPRAN's argument to insinuate that the EC's claims about the BVRs and other equipment being obsolete "is sheer mendacity".

He was of the view that IPRAN had been advancing the argument that the current BVMS was not obsolete based on an alleged email correspondence they (IPRAN) claimed to have had with the manufacturers of that device.

He said, "It is our considered view that such a conclusion can only be a function of lack of information or excessive misinformation and or mischief."